I often can’t keep up with threads any more, they are just too fast moving and I’m even a slower thinker than I used to be.….sometimes think I should retire from forums, but just want to drop this off. A couple of days ago, when I sat down to read my bible, I happened to open it here and began reading this passage, and the Lord began to feed me with understanding, because I had never really understood this before, and maybe I’m one of the last to get this now, but if memory serves (which it doesn’t always) I think some here have not been rightly dividing it:
Phl 3:9-17
And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be THUS MINDED: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.
Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.
Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.
Paul is saying that he does not count himself to have apprehended……and that we, no matter whereto we have attained, are to be of the same mind as him. Ie, not to ever count ourselves as having “arrived” in this life, so to speak. Some translations translate v 14 as being an upward call…..which is directional rather than having a fixed mark. Ie, the mark of the prize of the upward call or high calling is directional and not fixed, in this life. We are to keep running this race with all that we’ve got, and keep growing upward.
Before he was saved Paul persecuted the church badly, and since the bible says who has been forgiven much loves much, he laboured more than all the other apostles. If someone who was as devoted and fruitful as Paul could say that he didn’t count himself to have apprehended, then surely how much more should we not exceed that mind (way of thinking) as well.